National Smut Month

You know it’s National Poetry Month when non-poetry publications and corporate advertising venues try their hand at poetry with drab reader submissions that sound like J. Crew catalog descriptions with a heavy stock market accent.

Actually, Travis Nichols says it quite well: “…media outlets all across the country are shining a spotlight on the art form they normally ignore, mangle, or treat with derision. Hooray!”

And, according to the Oregonian, the city of Portland wants to see more poetry on buses — namely more dirty words. Unfortunately, when they say dirty they mean environmental enemies like “Greenhouse gas, waste, congestion, pollution and ineffiency [sic].”

We were thinking something more like this:

Fellatio

by John Updike

How beautiful to think
that each of these clean secretaries
at night, to please her lover, takes
a fountain into her mouth
and lets her insides, drenched with seed,
flower into her landscapes:
meadows sprinkled with baby’s breath,
hoarse twiggy woods, birds dipping, a multitude
of skies containing clouds, plowed earth stinking
of its upturned humus, and small farms each
with a silver silo.

Um, well, it looks like we’re talking smut poems now.

High Risk Literature!

Okay, if that’s the case please allow us to throw out a few names: Dennis Cooper for one, because if you run a Google search on him you’ll get: “this is high risk literature.”

HOT!

Next is Bob Glück, not only because he is a rad professor, but also because he’s written some of the riskiest sentences you’ll ever read:

from I Boombox

Clean blood and ass,
Caucasian, who
Really want a
Relationship and
Montgomery Libya’s
Lady Bird: the newest
Cross street is Haiti,
Vintage sofa deathbed,
The wide sand plains
Of commerce. The
Penny bounced with
Amazing freedom.
Absent-minded bakery,
A crass scramble
To put the snake
On the first thing
In sight. Education
Lite. In the movie
Sad nipples die.
The minuscule
Essential as will.
Blue room blue eyes
Tried to keep
Me there: Charmed
Steele frame.
The chilling
Potato of prison
Abuse videotaped
This wake of clay,
Political alerts
From the grave,
A scrubbed chicken
At Notre Dame,
Charwoman of the
Architectural Dept.,
Her methodical
Imprecision breaking
A random feast
With a family meal.
Outside the sun
Was straightening up,
And further disrespected
What went wrong,
A superbly scanned
Background. Murky
Ass. Semi
Circles call for
Attacks on Iraqis.
In the suburbs of
Los Angeles straight
Rains are rage.
The emotions are
Great fun, who wants
To strobe, tease, such
And look?—a queer-
Sized bed, a
Panoramic intent.
Wet tongue and four
Holes to piss, a
Hint of bamboolary.
Good looking,
Lithe-bellied.
“Single and looking
For exasperation.”
A grinding spirit,
Her nipple meandered
Through grainy expanses
Out going get going
Ex-species wheel
Around a dazed
World looking
For a man to
Court and spank,
Powdered sugar
On abstract skin.
The remarkable
Timelessness of
This incident.
For a thorough fire
She pistols the
Dining room.
The lickerish shed
Leans against the
White picket fence,

And, we’re back.

We took a cold shower and are ready to seriously discuss Poetry Month. Take this news for instance: The San Luis Obispo Tribune is asking its readers to submit poems in honor of poetry month.

Aww.

There’s a city that celebrates National Poetry month good and proper. They deserve applause.

Sure, it’s a nice story. But you know what? Here at DSM, every month is National Smut Month.

Ahem.

We mean Poetry… National Poetry Month… Right. Right?

– Lori Huskey